Terry Marotta: Homeless lesson not good enough?

I recently wrote about the Night of Homelessness our church youth once shared, and boy did I get some mail, mostly from people who found the very concept a trivialization.

Terry Marotta

I recently wrote about the Night of Homelessness our church youth once shared, and boy did I get some mail, mostly from people who found the very concept a trivialization.

“Kids having a sleepover in front of their own church: how would that raise anyone’s awareness?” wrote one person.

“A shallow exercise; a lark, one might even say,” another said.

The dozens who wrote me were outraged for two reasons: One, because merely to talk about homelessness, then sleep outside in cardboard boxes, seemed like play-acting to them; and two, because when, at 2 a.m., an intoxicated man wove up the hill toward our by-then-mostly sleeping kids, our youth minister and I headed him off, speaking with him for only a few minutes though he said he felt lost and lonely and his life.

We should have sat with that man for as long as he needed, was the feeling.

“You were sent a test and you failed it,” is how one reader put it.

Now sure, merely trying to imagine the plight of the homeless could be construed as a meager effort, but it was just the beginning for our young people, lesson one if you will.

Lesson two commenced in the following months when this same youth minister began leading us into city with packaged foods in our backpacks for when somebody asked us for money. She taught us how to say, “Well, I can offer you these peanut butter crackers.” Or else, “I’m going into this McDonald’s here. Can I get you a burger?”

We all thus quickly realized how wrong it feels to just rush past someone who speaks to you, treating him as if he didn’t even exist.

And lesson three commenced when we were encouraged to try initiating conversation ourselves.

As part of this initiative, three young people and I were sent walking along a busy city sidewalk, where we soon came upon a twisted man in a wheelchair, the panhandler’s traditional cup in hand.

“Hello,” one of our girls began, swallowing hard to overcome her shyness. “We’re just going to get some coffee. Can we bring you some?”

The man’s affliction, which sent his head arcing back, also prevented him from closing his lips, thus making of each word a long groan-like utterance.

We struggled to finally realize that he was saying three things.

“If you’d be so kind.”

“Cream and sugar.”

And, after an effort so great as to cause facial spasms, “I will require assistance.”

“Of course!” we realized then. “He can’t use his hands!”

We returned a few minutes later with his coffee and the doughnut he had also said he would enjoy. One of us held the cup to his lips and one concentrated on interpreting his words. Then the one holding the doughnut stepped close, hesitating.

“How do I ... ?” “What should I ... ?” “I don’t know how to do this!”

Again the groan-like sounds by the man. Again our struggle to sort sound into meaning. And at last we understood:

“It’s not a complicated process,” he was saying.

In other words, “Bring the food to my lips.” In other words, “Feed me.”

Since that day some decade ago, we have continued with our “lessons,” cooking for and eating with homeless families, working beside them, even living in the same church basement; and have come to see for ourselves that all we needed to do was learn to think of others and not ourselves.

And the gentleman in the wheelchair was right: that wasn’t in the least a complicated process.